It should probably be a sticky at this point. It also motivated to make a new backup of my TiVo HD with the newly paired cable card, especially after realizing I didn't have a good 3.5d backup for my DSR6000 and DirecTV has apparently shut off the spigot. I should probably also grab a backup of my parents S2 the next time they go on vacation.

It should probably be a sticky at this point. It also motivated to make a new backup of my TiVo HD with the newly paired cable card, especially after realizing I didn't have a good 3.5d backup for my DSR6000 and DirecTV has apparently shut off the spigot. I should probably also grab a backup of my parents S2 the next time they go on vacation.

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Are you thinking that a backup of the HD will preserve the CableCard pairing if you ever need to do a drive swap? My only experience so far was putting a 1TB pre-imaged drive in my Premeire. The CableCard pairing was still intact so I'm thinking that it isn't necessary to back up the drive just to save the pairing. I'd be interested in hearing from others on this subject.

Are you thinking that a backup of the HD will preserve the CableCard pairing if you ever need to do a drive swap? My only experience so far was putting a 1TB pre-imaged drive in my Premeire. The CableCard pairing was still intact so I'm thinking that it isn't necessary to back up the drive just to save the pairing. I'd be interested in hearing from others on this subject.

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Changing the Hard drive does require a new CableCard pairing for Comcast systems, (at least) at first you may think your cable card is ok as most channels will come in OK, but HBO type channels you may be paying for will not come in until the card is paired. A Comcast cable tech also told me that after 30 to 45 days a cable card that not paired will stop working, never tested this out. If you copy the original drive that was paired, than add space you will not have to do pairing again for your cable card.

Are you thinking that a backup of the HD will preserve the CableCard pairing if you ever need to do a drive swap? My only experience so far was putting a 1TB pre-imaged drive in my Premeire. The CableCard pairing was still intact so I'm thinking that it isn't necessary to back up the drive just to save the pairing. I'd be interested in hearing from others on this subject.

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The Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ leads one to believe that re-pairing would be required if you restore a backup without that info, but I've only had a cable card for three weeks and don't have any personal experience with a drive swap including a cable card.

At this point, I'm just trying to cover my behind. The TiVo HD was released five years ago and the current software version 11.0K came out more than one year ago, so it is quite possible that development has stopped for this platform and a backup could be a handy thing to have on hand.

The Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ leads one to believe that re-pairing would be required if you restore a backup without that info, but I've only had a cable card for three weeks and don't have any personal experience with a drive swap including a cable card.

At this point, I'm just trying to cover my behind. The TiVo HD was released five years ago and the current software version 11.0K came out more than one year ago, so it is quite possible that development has stopped for this platform and a backup could be a handy thing to have on hand.

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I need to get a cablecard for an S3HD that I recently got. I swapped out the 160GB drive for a 320GB that I pulled from a spare unsub Premiere I have sitting on the shelf. Maybe after I get the cablecard working in the current box configuration I will swap the original drive back in to see if the pairing sticks. Given the pain of getting cablecards paired for my Tivos I can understand your desire for a backup of your own box.

and you have to remember it came off of a Maxtor 40GB drive, which is slighty larger. LBA wise, than its Seagate and Western Digital contemporaries, and must be restored to something at least as large, LBA wise.

I'd tell you that LBA number if the drive wasn't buried under a bunch of stuff.

Quick question. I have a Hughes HDVR2 from 2003 and the HD died on me today. I was looking for my backup and old drive from when I bought it; but have had no luck. Would you happen to know where I could get a base image so I can mfstools to a new drive? Any direction or help in getting a standard image to get this operational again?

If you do not already have a dropbox account, I could have them send you an invitation to get a free account, and that would give us both extra free space.

You don't need one to download those S3 HD images, just click on the links, but it is free and it can come in handy as a sort of internet hard drive and I can use the extra space for images for other TiVo models.

Now, tell me exactly what you broke and how you did it so that we can figure out how to fix everything.

So I had one Tivo HD die. It wouldn't make it past the Welcome, Powering up Screen. I have a second one that was still working and that got things going well enough. All the reports say that the Hard Drive went bad so I assumed that was wrong. I opened the bad Tivo and pulled the drive and installed it into my computer. The hard drive checked clean. So I decided to pull the engineer technique and swap hard drives between the working and non-working devices. If the problem stays with the hard drive I know what's up. If it stays with the Tivo I also know what's going on. After swapping, neither Tivo worked. After swapping back still, neither Tivo worked.
In playing with winmfs and backup images I fixed it once. After more playing around I broke it again and couldn't get it fixed and in some desperation wanted a new install image. After installing that to the good hard drive, and in the good tivo, it got working again. I then restored my past image, and that worked as well.
So I am back to one working and one broken Tivo. I currently believe the problem with the broken Tivo is the power supply, but I don't see any bad caps to replace. I would like a way to check for a bad power supply (output voltages or what not). Or I might swap power supplies and see where the problem goes.
Any advice is appreciated. And thanks for the back up images.